Berlin Museum Gardens
Tips for the most beautiful green spots
Indoors and outdoors, art and nature - in our service article, we combine the two and have put together some special museum locations in the countryside for you. Some gardens are freely accessible, some can be visited together with the museum, some even serve as a green exhibition space for art themselves.
(Status: July 2024)
Art in nature
Brücke Museum
The Brücke-Museum is located on the edge of the Grunewald forest - just getting there feels more like an excursion into nature than a visit to a museum. And even when you enter the Düttmann building, nature is never completely gone, on the contrary: floor-to-ceiling windows offer views of the forest landscape, and the museum rooms are grouped around green courtyards. This is not by chance, of course, but entirely in the spirit of the artists' group, for whose members nature was just as good a place to work as the studio.
The world in a Garden
Botanic Garden
From the Alps to the tropics and from Japan to South America - at the Botanical Garden in Berlin, you can literally take a trip around the world, and that was exactly the idea of founder Adolf Engler over 100 years ago. With 15 greenhouses, many themed gardens and 20,000 different plant species, the Berlin Botanical Garden is one of the largest and most important in the world. The associated museum is currently closed, but nature is actually the main exhibit here.
Green oasis in Kreuzberg
Jewish Museum Berlin
Two gardens complement the building ensemble of the Libeskind building and the old building. They offer visitors a place to relax and are also the backdrop for various events such as family celebrations, concerts and readings. In the strictly geometrically designed museum garden by Kollhoff and Ovaska with a pergola, plane tree grove and a round fountain made of red granite, a planted lawn and deckchairs invite visitors to linger. Another garden area around the Libeskind building, designed by Berlin landscape designers Cornelia Müller, Elmar Knippschild and Jan Wehberg, picks up on the formal language of the architecture. The free-standing structures planned by Daniel Libeskind, the "voids" or empty spaces within the building, are marked out as gravel surfaces. A rose grove grows around the Garden of Exile, reminding us that the rose was one of the few plants permitted for cult purposes in historical Jerusalem. Entry to the garden area is free of charge.
Sculpture Garden
Kunsthaus Dahlem
The Kunsthaus Dahlem is located in the immediate vicinity of the Brücke-Museum and thus also Grunewald. Once the home of the former state studio of sculptor Arno Breker, whose works reflected National Socialist ideology, it is now an exhibition space for post-war modernism in Germany. The main focus is on sculptural art, which can also be seen in the spacious, natural garden. The garden, in turn, is connected to the garden of the Brücke Museum.
Art by the water
Haus am Waldsee
The Haus am Waldsee is surrounded by fairytale trees between Krumme Lanke and Schlachtensee. Originally built as a private villa in the English country house style, it became a place for the arts in 1946. To this day, the Haus am Waldsee presents international contemporary art in five solo or group exhibitions every year. And here, too, there is no art without nature: the house's garden, also in the English style, now serves as a sculpture park. Artistic interventions here question the relationship between man and nature. The house is open every second Friday until 8 p.m., and there is a fire bowl in the garden with changing delicacies from the café.
The garden on canvas
Liebermann-Villa on Lake Wannsee
In 1909, Max Liebermann acquired one of the last waterfront plots in the Alsen villa colony on Wannsee as a retreat for his family. The garden became the inspiration for more than 200 oil paintings and numerous works on paper. These works are the focus of the exhibition presentation - they are the motifs that visitors can still find today when walking through the garden - flower terrace, perennial garden, birch path or the view across the long lawn to the sailing boats. The front garden - a kitchen garden modeled on North German farm gardens - and the lakeside garden - terraced and with a view of the Wannsee - have been faithfully reconstructed. In May, you can find out more about the garden and the upcoming projects on two charity tours led by the gardener.
Art on the terrace
Neue Nationalgalerie
In 1962, the Berlin Senate commissioned the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe to build a museum for 20th century art in Berlin. The collection includes painting and sculpture from classical modernism to the 1960s. The surrounding gardens serve as a continuation of the exhibition areas, such as the sculpture garden in the basement, which is only separated from the exhibition by glass panes and enclosed on the other side, and the terrace in the upper hall. In summer, live concerts take place between nature and art. And from May to September, there is "Yoga in the Garden" every two weeks.
Kolbe's sculpture garden
Georg Kolbe Museum
When planning Georg Kolbe's residential and studio ensemble, architect Ernst Rentsch responded sensitively to the existing landscape. He decided to erect two buildings along a former forest path flanked by tall pine trees. This preserved and cultivated the existing natural space. The result was a sculpture garden for Kolbe's art and a private recreation area for his family, protected from outside views and as a connection for both buildings in the ensemble. Every first Sunday in June and July, the garden table under the pine trees of the Georg Kolbe Museum invites visitors to get creative outdoors. In addition, a new, site-specific work by the French-Egyptian artist Hoda Tawol, which addresses the interface between nature and culture, can be seen in the garden from May 26.
Visiting the middle ages
Düppel Historic Village
The remains of a village from the 12th century were excavated in what is now the Krummen Fenn nature reserve in the 1960s. The Düppel museum village with reconstructed houses, storehouses and workshops was then built on the historic site in the Berlin district of Nikolassee (Steglitz-Zehlendorf). The museum uses "living history" to teach adults and children about life, the landscape and rural culture in the Middle Ages. The museum garden in particular is worth a visit at any time of year. Here you can find plants that were planted in the Middle Ages and some of which are still used in natural medicine today.
Open-air studio
Museum Europäischer Kulturen
Although art is not usually exhibited in the beautiful garden of the Museum of European Cultures, this green oasis is often used as an open-air studio for workshops accompanying exhibitions or as a stage for the Fête de la Musique in the summer months. But you can also simply relax here without an occasion and enjoy the peace and quiet of the city before or after visiting an exhibition.
Pollinator Pathmaker Garden
Museum für Naturkunde
Since June 2023, Pollinator Pathmaker - a living work of art by artist Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg - has been inviting visitors to the museum forecourt to view the world from the perspective of pollinating insects, whose populations have declined dramatically over the last 40 years. The basis for Ginsberg's pollinator-friendly garden artworks is a specially developed planting program based on an algorithm that is freely accessible on the pollinator.art website. The planting program uses a list of locally suitable plants to create individual planting plans that support as many pollinating species as possible and thus contribute to their protection.
A manor house in the country side
Museum Neukölln
The Neukölln Museum offers a lively, interactive introduction to the past and present of the Neukölln district and deals with various aspects of the district's culture and history. The museum is housed in an idyllic estate and is located in the immediate vicinity of the picturesque Britz Castle Park. The green meadows with sheep, goats, horses and geese, the blooming flower beds and the shady trees invite locals and visitors alike to relax and enjoy the beauty of nature.
A museum park full of technology
German Museum of Technology
The twelve-hectare park of the German Museum of Technology is something special: here, visitors will not only find the historic brewery, functioning windmills and the forge's water wheel, but also plenty of nature and places to linger, learn and relax. A green oasis in the middle of Berlin.
Retreat for Garden philosophers
Karl-Förster-Garten
Flowering perennials and ornamental grasses in the garden are taken for granted today. We owe this not least to Potsdam's honorary citizen Karl Foerster (1874-1970). His design ideas still shape garden culture today, as an exhibition on the 150th anniversary of his birth shows. In Foerster's garden in Bornim, the flowers, foliage and shape of the plants unfold a naturalistic garden image all year round, complemented by his numerous cultivars. The former house and garden are listed buildings and have long been a place of pilgrimage for gardening enthusiasts. Foerster has influenced generations of landscape architects and perennial plant breeders across national borders. And so his legacy survives in contemporary gardens far beyond Brandenburg.
Pleasure Garden
Altes Museum
Der Lustgarten liegt mitten auf der Museumsinsel, zwischen Altem Museum, Berliner Dom und Humboldt Forum, und war einst Teil des Berliner Schlosses. Er zählt zu den geschichtsträchtigen Plätzen der Stadt und wurde im Lauf der Zeit mehrmals umgestaltet. Heute schmücken ihn zwei Alleen aus Lindenbäumen sowie eine imposante rote Granitschale. Im Sommer laden die Rasenflächen sowie ein Brunnen in der Mitte des Gartens nach einem ausgiebigen Museumsbesuch zur Erholung ein.
Garden courtyards for the arts
Akademie der Künste on Hanseatenweg
Werner Düttmann created the Akademie der Künste (West) on the edge of the Tiergarten. The spacious but simple ensemble of three different buildings is connected by inner courtyards and glazed corridors. The garden in the inner courtyard was laid out in 1960 according to plans by Berlin landscape architect Walter Rossow and, with its open spaces and accessible reed and grass gardens, serves as an extension of the interior spaces. The garden still shows today how a harmonious interplay between vegetation, water and art can look.